


Blades

by kalirush



Category: Original Work
Genre: Baking, Gen, a lot of butter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17699999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalirush/pseuds/kalirush
Summary: Ulli goes looking for a mentor: the legendary Aellaria Sunkiller.





	Blades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyphomandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/gifts).



The house was at the end of a winding road, and the walk into the house wound for an age more along the property, bushes and trees blocking it from the road. The house, when she finally made it there, was small, but neatly kept: no sign to show who truly lived there. _If the men in the village told me right, anyway,_ she thought.

Ulli straightened her shoulders, feeling the comfortable weight of her glaive where it was strapped to her back. She had found her mentor at last: the woman who would teach her the skills no one else was willing to; the woman she’d been searching for months. Aellaria Sunkiller- hero of the Perseid Battles, scourge of the Sunless Wastes, first general to the king for two decades before she retired- lived here, and Ulli intended to be her apprentice.

Ulli knocked. No one answered, and so she knocked again. After no one answered _again_ , she cautiously put her ear up to the door. She could hear the sound of movement in the distance. Annoyed, she knocked again, louder and longer this time. Finally, she could hear someone coming to the door. It opened.

Ulli blinked. A shortish, roundish woman with gnarled elbows and gray hair that was scattered through with black and silver looked up at her. She was wearing an apron, and there was a white powder that looked suspiciously like flour on her nose. “What do you want?” the woman asked. “The cake isn’t due for two days yet, and I already got my deliveries for the day.”

“Aellaria Sunkiller?” Ulli asked, incredulous.

The woman sighed. “Yes,” she said. 

“ _The_ Aellaria Sunkiller?” Ulli asked again. “Hero of the Perseid Battles? Scourge of the Sunless Wastes?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “That’s me,” she said.

“I want to be your apprentice,” Ulli blurted out.

“Fine,” Aellaria Sunkiller said. “You can get the pans greased.” And then she turned and marched back into the house, leaving Ulli standing in front of an empty hall, not sure what had just happened.

\-------------------------

Ulli picked at the cupcake wrappers. The last time she’d done this, half of the cupcakes had come out with the wrappers doubled and Aellaria- Lari- had been annoyed. Ulli was offended by the task. Surely, _surely,_ putting cupcake wrappers in a tin was within her capabilities.

“I didn’t come here to bake,” she complained to Lari. 

“Well, you’re not going to get to bake, if you can’t pay better attention than that,” Lari observed, carefully sifting flour onto a scale. 

“I came here to learn to fight!” Ulli protested.

“Pshh,” Lari said, rolling her eyes. She rolled her eyes a lot. “When you’re done with that, go fetch me three dozen eggs out of the pantry; I’ve got a meringue to make. You can practice separating eggs.”

“I didn’t come here to separate eggs!” Ulli shouted, as she went down the hall to the pantry.

\-----------------

Ulli was cubing her fourth pound of butter in a row. “You’re supposed to be a master with the glaive,” she said, despondently. “Third-best in the kingdom.”

Lari shrugged, and checked the temperature on her sugar again. “Third-best,” she said derisively. “I don’t know where they get these numbers from. It’s not like we ever held a tournament, and even then, that’d only tell you who won those particular bouts.”

Ulli dropped a pile of butter cubes into the bowl and wiped her greasy fingers on her apron. “So, why won’t you teach me?”

“I _am_ teaching you,” Lari said. “I taught you how to temper eggs this morning.” 

“Why won’t you teach me _glaive fighting_?” Ulli said, whacking a lump of butter on the table in frustration.

Lari shrugged again. “We’ve got this naming-ceremony cake to finish,” she said. “Who has time for glaive fighting?”

\---------------------

Ulli held her blade up, checking for sharpness.

“Just get on with it!” Lari called, from across the room. “Those hazelnuts won’t chop themselves!”

Ulli sighed and set to it. “At least I get to use a knife for _something_ ,” she said.

“If you don’t like it, why don’t you go?” Lari asked her. She didn’t seem much concerned either way.

“I don’t know,” Ulli said, putting her arm into the hazelnuts. “Why won’t you teach me glaive fighting?”

Lari whacked her rolling pin into the butter on the table. “Why do you want me to teach you glaive fighting?” she asked. “I could also teach you to make laminated pastry; you haven’t asked for that.”

Ulli glared back at Lari. “It’s been a month,” she said, “and you have yet to let me actually bake anything.”

Lari shrugged, and whacked the butter some more. “It’s been a month,” she said, “and you’re still here. I’m not making you stay. And I’m paying you, but I’m not paying you that much.”

Ulli scraped the nuts into a bowl with the blunt side of the knife. “I don’t-” she started. She cleared her throat, feeling her cheeks go warm. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Lari made a non-committal humming noise and started rolling the butter smooth. “And you want to be a glaive fighter because?” she asked. 

Ulli felt the tips of her ears go positively hot. “My father was a soldier,” she said, quietly. “It’s his glaive. He, um,” she scooped out another handful of hazelnuts. “He served with you. He always talked about you, so I thought- I thought-”

“That you would find something here other than an old woman baking cakes,” Lari said. 

“I thought you were a soldier,” Ulli said. 

“I _am_ a soldier,” Lari said. “I’ve heard that I’m the third-best glaive fighter in the kingdom, though that’s hardly the measure of a soldier. I’m also an excellent baker. I’m a painter, too. I’ve had time to be a lot of things.”

“Then why not teach me to fight?” Ulli asked. 

Lari shrugged. “Some of the things I am,” she said, “I got to choose. Some of them, I didn’t. I’m an old woman now, Ulli. I have too little life left to waste it on things I didn’t choose. This, I chose.” She waved at the countertop, dusted with flour, at the kitchen, covered in pots and pans and smelling of chocolate and caramel and butter. 

Ulli looked down at the hazelnuts, the knife. “You won’t ever teach me to fight?” 

“When you came here, you looked lost,” Lari said. “What else could it mean, that a girl like you shows up on my doorstep begging to be taken as an apprentice? But _lost_ is a bad time to make decisions. Stay here, make cakes with me for a while, and then you can choose. If that glaive is what you really want, if you want to take up the king’s flag, then I’ll teach you that. Or you can stay and make cakes; I could use the help. Or you could take your earnings and go somewhere else and do something else.” She looked up at Ulli, her eyes bright and clear and serious. “Something you choose.”

Ulli’s hands tightened around the knife. “Okay,” she said. “Deal.”

“Deal,” Lari said, and smiled. She wrapped up the butter in a clean packet of parchment and went to put it away to chill.


End file.
